For 2 years, climate resources shifted in COVID-19. Now, cities like Hamilton look to get on track

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Staff at Environment Hamilton (EH) couldn't help but feel despondent while watching a recent city council debate about adding more lanes to a major expressway in the southern Ontario city.

"Can you imagine if our council talked about the climate crisis with the same level of gusto?" asked Lynda Lukasik, executive director of EH, one of the city's loudest voices on climate action.

For the organization's climate campaign co-ordinator, Ian Borsuk, the discussion over roadway expansion was telling.

"We have staff time to work on [a] Commonwealth Games bid, we can talk about expanding highways…. It's been very interesting to see, over the course of the pandemic, where there still are resources and staff time available that wasn't available to climate action."

Friday marks the third Earth Day since the start of the pandemic. The health crisis prompted a massive shift of resources and energy at all levels of government.

In Hamilton, groups like EH and Hamilton 350 say that over the past two years, the city has fallen behind on its plans to combat climate change — and it's time to get on track.  

The city's detailed plan to achieve net-zero emissions, an urban forest strategy and regular climate-change updates to council have taken a back seat to COVID-19, the organizations say.

They note the city's three staffers on the climate file were redeployed for several months, while some other municipalities, such as nearby Halton Hills in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), strengthened their climate-change departments in tandem with their pandemic response.

"During the pandemic, we… have been saying to the [City of Hamilton's] manager and staff, 'You need to pandemic proof your climate action,'" said Lukasik. "I think we all collectively understand that we need to be responding to the pandemic, but that doesn't mean the tsunami waiting in the wings can be ignored in the interim."

A pause on climate plans

Not long before the pandemic hit, Hamilton declared a climate emergency, vowing to treat climate change as an existential crisis. 

It was one of hundreds of Canadian municipalities to do so. According to Random Acts of Green, a Peterborough, Ont.-based organization tracking those sign-ons, 642 have made a declaration, including hundreds of municipal councils in Quebec starting in 2018, then Vancouver in January 2019 and Hamilton two months later. The Assembly of First Nations (AFN), which represents 634 communities, declared a First Nations Climate Emergency in July 2019.  

In Hamilton, the declaration directed staff to start work on a plan to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, in line with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommendations on how to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

It also prompted staff to form a multi-department task force, which has been working to "support a culture shift ensuring that climate change is understood as a collective corporate responsibility and that a climate change lens is incorporated into routine work across all city departments," according to the city's website. Activists say this is not yet happening, a claim the city did not deny.

"It is complex information to integrate into departments," said Trevor Imhoff, Hamilton's senior project manager for air quality and climate change, and one of the three staffers who were temporarily redeployed to other work. "It's an ongoing thing that we need to do." 

Lukasik and her staff believe it is still possible for Hamilton to reach net zero by 2050, but say residents need to be better engaged by the city, and the pace of work needs to be significantly accelerated, particularly around the critically important Community Energy and Emissions Plan. The plan is expected to lay out the city's pathway to net zero, something Borsuk says has been promised for six years.

"COVID-19 absolutely delayed Hamilton's climate-change action," said Borsuk. "But … there are delays that are happening that you can't blame on COVID-19." 

Imhoff said the plan is expected to come before council for approval next month. 

Borsuk was one of many interviewed for this story to comment that Imhoff is doing his best, but is under-resourced. 

"We really appreciate the work that Trevor does," Borsuk said. "From my perspective, I am seeing Trevor trying to do the work of 10 people. Trevor really cares about what he is doing." 

A shift of resources

Progress on climate change has appeared slow at times, both locally and at the national level. Canada has not once met its own carbon-reduction targets, for example. 

In Hamilton, like other regions, emissions dropped for a short period of time at the start of 2020, around the start of the pandemic, but the reduction was not expected to be sustained.  

Globally, the IPCC says continued investment in fossil fuels and slow work to curb emissions has the world on a path to being 2.4 to 3.5 C warmer by the end of the century — a level experts say is sure to cause severe impacts for much of the world's population.

Keith Brooks, programs director for Toronto-based Environmental Defence, said getting traction on climate issues during the pandemic has been a challenge everywhere, not just in Hamilton. 

"The 2020 [federal] budget was supposed to be a climate budget … the election had been fought about climate change in 2019," said Brooks. "There was supposed to be big spending on climate. The budget was then delayed and then the budget was all oriented toward COVID.

"Climate change faded into the background from the government perspective. Just like how in Hamilton government, workers were redeployed to COVID — that certainly happened at the federal government as well."

He said polling consistently shows that climate change has remained a top concern for Canadians however, even throughout the pandemic. 

"I think it's going to return to the foreground once the pandemic recedes," he said.

'Chance to be visible again'

For several McMaster University students, the pandemic didn't lessen their concern over local climate action.

At an in-person rally on campus on March 25, a group of about 200 students and some faculty gathered to continue to pressure the university to stop its investments in fossil fuels. The movement is known as the Mac Divest campaign. 

One of the rally organizers, engineering student Mymoon Bhuiyan, said the issue is too important to him, pandemic or not. 

"I've been here doing this for 10 years … I keep coming back every day because you can never give up," he told CBC Hamilton. 

Nena Tran, also an engineering student, said marches like this one — part of the Fridays for Future movement led by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg — "did take a break." 

Some events went online, but they don't compare to the energy and attention of an in-person event, Tran said. 

"In an event like this, especially if you're going to the Student Centre, it's sort of hard to ignore. I just want McMaster to know that things will ramp up." 

Student Felicia Mikrogianakis said her activism started during the pandemic, when she participated in "virtual climate strikes." 

"You don't get the same kind of engagement online, but I think the call to action, I think the passion from youth, I don't think any of that is diminished," she said. "And if anything, [it] has only gotten stronger. Now we just have the chance to be a little more visible again."

Mary Anne Caibaiosai, a water walker from Wiikwemkoong First Nation on Manitoulin Island, who has walked the Grand River and has prayed for the health of polluted Chedoke Creek in Hamilton, agrees the pandemic shouldn't be a reason to slow action. 

"People can still do the work. Via zoom, there have been all kinds of conferences going on. I was part of a soil conference and water conversations with non-Indigenous peoples," she said. "There's still work that can be done that way, sharing knowledge and sharing teachings." 

The way forward

At Hamilton city hall, Imhoff admits there were delays during the pandemic, but said some progress continued even while his team was working on other projects. 

He cited the public works department's green-fleet strategy, which will see the purchase of 89 city-owned "light-duty" electric vehicles to replace the city's gas-powered fleet.

In December, Imhoff submitted a report to council noting the city has spent $57.3 million on climate-change actions, such as bicycle infrastructure, reducing corporate emissions, flood mitigation and adaptation, and funding the Bay Area Climate Change Council, a group working to help coordinate the local climate response. His team also created a document that shows climate forecasts for the Hamilton area as far out as 2080, he said, aimed at informing city decision-making across departments.

He also said city council has dedicated surplus funds from the budget process to a $1.5-million reserve that will fund innovative corporate and community climate-reduction projects. And he pointed to a home retrofit program that is expected soon.

"Many of our community advocates — I fully support their advocacy for accelerating climate change action — would want to see more," he told CBC Hamilton. "I also would want to see more. We do the work with the resources we have."

Jim Quinn, a member of the steering committee of Hamilton 350 and a biology professor at McMaster University, said someone with the power to compel other department heads should be leading the climate team. (Imhoff himself noted he has "little authority over other departments," but said city manager Janette Smith is supportive of his team's efforts.)

We can't keep putting emissions in the atmosphere … until 2030 and at the last minute we try to resolve it. It sets us up for failure.- Jim Quinn, McMaster University professor and Hamilton 350 member

Quinn said every year the city goes without a plan to reverse its emissions trajectory is another year of dumping carbon into the atmosphere that we will have to deal with later. 

"I think all of our goals have to be 'as soon as possible ….' We can't keep putting emissions in the atmosphere … until 2030 and at the last minute we try to resolve it. It sets us up for failure."

Quinn and others at Hamilton 350 have been advocating for the city to stop allowing natural gas lines at new home builds, forcing a switch away from one of the most prominent sources of fossil fuels in the urban environment. Imhoff said that would have to come from the province, which regulates the Ontario Building Code.

Climate watchers are seeing wins and losses elsewhere in the city as well. 

One major win is the plan to switch from coal-fired steelmaking to an electric-arc process at ArcelorMittal Dofasco by 2028. While construction has not begun, an ArcelorMittal spokesperson told CBC Hamilton "project planning is now underway." 

The upgrade will reduce the steel mill's annual carbon dioxide emissions by about three million tonnes, accounting for about 30 per cent of Hamilton's overall emissions. Of Hamilton's 11 million tonnes of annual greenhouse gas emissions, ArcelorMittal Dofasco contributes 4.8 tonnes, Bianca Caramento, manager of the Bay Area Climate Change Council, told CBC last year at the time of the announcement.

The city and industry aren't the only ones with a role to play moving forward. 

Intersectional coalitions like the Just Recovery campaign underscore the value of different sectors working together. Post-secondary institutions are part of the puzzle as well. 

McMaster University has been criticized in environmental circles — including by several people interviewed for this article — for its plans to build gas-burning generators, which are expected to be online in 2023. (University spokesperson Wade Hemsworth said the plant will reduce demand on Ontario's electricity grid at peak times and help the school save money. McMaster also said it is committed to being carbon neutral.)

Altaf Arain, director of the McMaster Centre for Climate Change, said it's incumbent on every government and institution, including McMaster, to take the IPCC's warnings to heart and curb use of fossil fuels.

"We have less time left … we have to do more," said Arain, suggesting that a green alternative such as solar panels would be the better solution than the generators.

"When it comes to this kind of situation, it seems like a balancing act: economic impact versus environmental impact. From my perspective … go for the bigger investment and go faster on it."